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Food safety is an important issues in today’s overpopulated global market. Key global food safety concerns include: the spread of hazardous bacteria, chemical food contaminants, new food technologies assessments, and building strong food safety systems to ensure a safe global food chain. Though regulatory demands are key to food safety, there are also strong business reasons for adopting ever more stringent food safety procedures. Corporate responsibility is a key issue for businesses, as is the protection of shareholder value. A solid food safety record will become a valuable asset in the future and has potential to reverse consumers’ faltering trust in business and government. An international traceability system can be the solution to differing national standards of food regulation.

The most important factor driving the implementation of food safety and traceability for food manufacturers is international legislation. Any food business must first and foremost comply with its national requirements of food safety and hygiene law. However there are also strong external pressures to exceed the standards set out in legislation. Chief among these are the demands of customers, especially the large retail chains, which are pressing for coordination among third party certification schemes.[i] We need to take the impetus off consumers’ responsibility for monitoring food safety and put it on international regulatory commisions like the World Health Organization.

The United States population is currently facing the worst health crisis that it has ever seen. The obesity epidemic now directly affects at least one-third of our population, with the average American now carrying roughly twenty-three extra pounds of weight (Fulkerson, 2011). Yet, the discomfort suffered by carrying around these extra pounds is not the only negative side effect associated with this drastic increase in weight gain. Exponential increases in a variety of chronic, life threatening disease have also occurred in the past twenty years, with the most alarming statistics being seen in our children. Children as young as the age of four are now being classified as obese and diagnosed with diabetes and hypertension, diseases that traditionally have only ever affected aging adults. These facts clearly prove that something drastic needs to be done to save our citizens (Moss, 2).

The main causes of obesity can be directly tied to the food that we eat. Since the 1950s, food corporations have greatly increased the amount of refined and highly processed foods used in their products. These ingredients, while being highly toxic for your health, masks themselves by being highly enjoyable to one’s sense of taste, as well as tricking our brain into thinking that we need to eat more of them in order to become satisfied. However, it is not only our reliance on these highly processed foods that is causing our health problems. An increased consumption of animal based products can also be linked to this rise in disease. Overall, it cannot be denied that it is our diet that is the primary culprit behind our failing health.

The only way to fix this problem is by educating our population. Many individuals have no idea that the ingredients in their favorite foods are actually toxic to them. There also needs to be an increase in physician nutrition education, as most physicians today receive barely any nutritional training in medical school, a key tool that could be used in the prevention of disease. While it would be beneficial if such ingredients were banned from the food market all together, realistically this is unlikely to occur. Therefore, it is crucial that we focus on the low cost alternative of educating our population in order to solve this epidemic.

Many people misconstrue the idea of an official language in the United States. They think that having one would take away from the cultural diversity and what makes America so special. Others may not even know that the United States doesn’t have English as its official language.

In fact, 51 countries around the world list English as an official language.

So, why doesn’t the United States? Doesn’t a large majority of the population speak English?

I will answer these questions, as well as offer my plan of action in regards to making English the official language of our beautiful country.

As you can see, oil dependency has been an issue for America for over 3 decades. Yet we continue to increase our consumption and dependency on oil every year. Just think how different our American lives would be without oil? People use and consume oil every day, yet rarely think about how important this natural resource is to our everyday lives. If America were to one day go without oil, all hell would break loose.

With this in mind, you need to understand what the future looks like as of now. China, a rising global power, is continuing to grow at an exponential rate. However, this growth demands oil to keep their economy functioning. Currently, America is the largest consumer of oil in the world. This position gives America purchasing power because we buy the most. However, if China is to surpass the US in the future, America loses much of its’ purchasing power to China. Now, we would still be able to get oil, but this oil prices would start sky rocketing. Even more importantly, oil is depleting fast. As I mentioned earlier, growing developed countries are starting to demand more oil. With this increase in competition of a diminishing resource, prices will once again, sky rocket.

Since our economy depends on oil to function, the rise in oil prices in the future is going to impact America exponentially if we keep our oil consuming habits. Of the 6.7 billion barrels a year America consumes, 75% goes to our transportation sector. There lies the answer! We can find ways to reduce our consumption every day through transportation. Americans are in love with their cars more than any other nation. We have the lowest gas tax, drive the most, hell, we even invented the damn things. But our car culture has a price. We are currently seeing it now with the rising gas prices and depleting oil reserves. Wars are already being fought over this valuable resource. But we can change and I can show you how…

The War on Drugs has been raging on since the 1970s when President Nixon declared drugs as America’s Public Enemy Number One. Since then Reagan increased the efforts against with a popular “tough on crime attitude” in which drug users, addicts, and traffickers alike were all treated as serious criminals. America now incarcerates more of its population per capita than any other sovereign nation in history. America’s jailing of its people has gotten to a point where the private prison industry is a lucrative and ever-expanding market; but if so many of our “criminals” are in correctional facilities, then why then does the United States of America still have the biggest drug use problem in the world?

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Using tools such as empirical data, academic journals, economic ideologies, and utilitarian philosophy it is easy to see that the current “tough on crime” system the United States uses to combat drug use is plain not working. Mass incarcerations have led to fraudulent, corrupt, unethical and amoral private prison corporations and the suppression of America’s weakest peoples. Meanwhile, across the pond, countries like Portugal are experiencing great success with the decriminalization of drugs. The United States Government needs to acknowledge the flaws of its current system and acknowledge the potential of decriminalization.

Check out this website to learn more and be sure to read my white paper!

Do you know that currently only about two percent of the entire food purchased in the United States comes from local and sustainable sources? This number is appalling when you think about it. Our reality right now is that many consumers eat meat without any knowledge or care of the journey it takes from the farm to the plate. Animal factory farms are increasingly becoming the normal use of production for meat as small family farms are slowly becoming extincted. While animal factory farms produce low cost meat for the American public, there are so many negative externalities that are produced from so many animals confined in small areas. These factories degrade local environments, treat animals inhumanely, use large amounts of energy and antibiotics, and cause harm to human health. It goes against nature to confine large numbers of animals in small areas without sunlight or open space for a long duration of time. The large amount of waste produced by animals often ends up in the local communities’ water supply, land, and air. Producers feed antibiotics to animals to make them grow big faster and protect them against diseases since they live in such horrible conditions. There has been an increase in antibiotic resistant disease since humans are eating these antibiotics in the meat. This is scary for the future because doctors are having to deal with a decreasing supply of antibiotics to treat human diseases. Treatment for antibiotic resistant diseases are very expensive and around a half of a million people die around the world each year. Other developed countries, such as Sweden and Denmark, have outlawed non-therapeutic antibiotics for animals and these countries reported that the welfare of animals has remained constant.

My white paper was aimed at Tyson Foods, our of the four largest food processors in the world. This company has been involved in many environmental lawsuits because of the major negative impact large scale animal factory farms have on the community. I proposed that the company change at least seventy-five percent of their US food production to local sustainable farms and stop feeding farm animals non-therapeutic antibiotics. Local, sustainable farms do not have as big of an negative impact on the environment and treat animals more humanely. Local food production is a sustainable method as it uses a lot less energy and natural resources. Animals would be mostly fed off of the farm instead of using fed, would be allowed to run around and stretch their legs, grow without the help of antibiotics, and have a better life. The current food system is unsustainable and I believe that the real change in the industry will come from a company within the industry. Tyson Foods supplies meat to a large population so the company has the potential to make a change to a better and more sustainable future.

This video displays the truth about life on a factory farms. It is uncomfortable to watch, but yet there hasn’t been much recent change.